T-RECURSIVE TECHNOLOGY ...capabilities

requirements
specification

Chances
are, you know your needs. But can you state them clearly and completely?
Teatronics Inc. gave us a general description for a high-end stage lighting
control system. We turned this into a detailed specification of the LD
series of lighting control consoles. Eighteen months later, the finished
product matched our original spec.

Embedded
systems are a synergistic blend of hardware and software. That's why the
hardware designer should appreciate the problems of the software designer.
And that's why Starr Labs asked us to specify, and then design, their D5
processor board.

For Teatronics Inc., we've designed a highly
integrated processor for the Producer II+, the Comstar/MD288
control processors, and a scalable multiprocessor system for the LD
series control consoles.

hardware
design

PCB
layout

Sure,
there are outfits that specialize in PCB layout. But an intelligent
layout requires hardware knowledge... and an optimal layout may require
hardware design skills as well. That's why Starr Labs chose us to lay out
their D5 processor board to their exacting specifications.

The board on the right is Starr Labs'
original board. Our "D5" design, on the left, has four times the
memory, four times the I/O capacity, and is 40% smaller.

We've also designed PCBs for Teatronics'
LD
series and Producer II+, for the McMaster Tandem Accelerator,
and for our own SM-II multiprocessor.

We're
not afraid to get our hands dirty. We've fabricated and built prototypes
of many of our hardware projects, including our own SM-II multiprocessor
trainer.

To automate the McMaster Tandem Accelerator,
we built a complete prototype of a multiprocessor control system, using
off-the-shelf SBCs and our own interface boards.

Shown here is the three-processor control
nucleus, installed in the equipment rack of the Tandem Accelerator.

prototype
fabrication

software
design

"A
better algorithm beats an optimizing compiler." Likewise, a better design
is often cheaper than a megabyte of RAM and a gigaHertz CPU. That's how
the Teatronics LD series lighting controller was able, with cheap
8-bit microcontrollers, to equal the performance of the competitors' 32-bit
CPUs and DSP coprocessors. That's how the Teatronics MD288 phase-controlled
96 Triacs with one microprocessor and one timer. And that's how we
made Forth Inc.'s
PAMELA simulator run faster on an IBM PC/XT than
its predecessor ran on a VAX.

For Altech Controls, we designed a distributed
object-oriented language for their BACnet(tm)-capable industrial controller.

We
don't just design; we implement as well. We wrote the complete operating
software for the Teatronics Comstar/MD288 and the AI-based McMaster
Tandem Accelerator.

We also programmed major portions of the
Teatronics LD series (system executive and user interface) and Quantum
consoles, the Starr Labs EventStation MIDI controller, and Altech
Controls' ANGL distributed control software.

And of course, our own CamelForth
programming environment is finding wide use in the embedded programming
community.

programming

documentation

Whoever
said "programmers don't like to document" never met us. We've written users'
manuals for the MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd. Z8/Super8 and
68HC16 Forth compilers, and for New Micros Inc.'s Small C compiler
for the 8051.

Some of our documentation is so good, it
gets published. Look at the
eight-part series
on our CamelForth system, which appeared in The Computer
Journal. And our three-part Forth Dimensions series describing
the Chromium compiler has become one of the standard references
on Forth metacompilers.

"It's
a dirty job, but someone has to do it." Perhaps you've been left with some
"legacy" code, and the original author is no longer available. Forth Inc.
contracted us to maintain and update their
BMDSIM simulator package
for just this reason.

Or perhaps your technical staff is swamped
with work. Teatronics Inc. hired us to convert their Producer II
software to a new CPU, and later to adapt and extend this software to produce
the Producer II+ and Quantum lighting control consoles.
And we've developed point-of-sale terminal kernels to support Forth Inc.'s
Open
Terminal Architecture project.

We
currently maintain the operating software for Starr Labs' EventStation
and MicroZone MIDI control products. (MicroZone photo courtesy
of Starr Labs.)